


Traditions

by prucanada



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: 5 Things, Canon Universe, F/F, Fluff, Kinda, MLSS2017, Polyshipping, Season 2 spoilers, adrinino is mentioned, all characters are adults, healthy polyamorous relationships, only as far as heroes + hero names goes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-16 22:13:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13063224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prucanada/pseuds/prucanada
Summary: Written for the Miraculous Ladybug Secret Santa gift exchange!Marinette, Alya, and Chloe have a few traditions they try to follow each Christmas.Some are more successful than others.





	Traditions

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for brookscribbles on Tumblr, who requested fluff and gave me the wonderful opportunity to write something for one of my favorite polyships!  
> Merry Christmas!

     Marinette, Alya, and Chloe have a few traditions they try to follow each Christmas.  
     Some are more successful than others.

* * *

 

 

1\. Window Shopping

"Wow, look at this one!" Alya said with a laugh, tugging Marinette closer to a window display. "It's an ice rink."  
"Yeah, it looks really well-done," Marinette replied, peering closely at the hand-sewn dresses on the dolls displayed in the window. "And--oh!" Holding Alya's hand in one of her own, Marinette lifted her other hand to point to a specific cluster of dolls to one side of the display. "They even made Heroes of Paris-themed dolls!"  
"What?!" beside Marinette, Chloe, who was carrying several shopping bags, leaned in closer as well. "It's true! Ladybug, Queen Bee, Chat Noir and Rena Rouge! How exquisite!" she gushed, leaning on Marinette.  
Alya grinned, lifting her phone to take a picture for her blog. "That's awesome! Aw, look--Rena Rouge and Queen Bee are holding hands!"  
"Yeah, but--" Chloe wrinkled her nose, "Chat Noir is skating with Ladybug. Look how romantic it looks!" She sniffed. "As if my darling Ladybug would be seduced by an alley cat like him!"  
Marinette laughed, squeezing Chloe's shoulder and planting a kiss on her cheek. "She would never."  
Chloe hummed in agreement. "I'm so glad you agree, Mari dear. Obviously, Ladybug only has eyes for Queen Bee!"  
"Hey!" Alya protested, tucking her phone back in her pocket. "You can't just leave Rena Rouge out of it!"  
"Ladybug may enjoy Rena Rouge's company, but I assure you, she loves Queen Bee more!" Chloe shifted her shopping bags to one hand and linked her free arm with Marinette's.  
"Oh, really?! And what gives you that idea, Chloe?" Alya glared playfully at her, wrapping an arm around Marinette's shoulders and kissing her on top of the head with a loud smack. "Rena Rouge and Ladybug obviously have something special, something that Queen Bee seems to lack." She smirked.  
"Girls, girls!" Marinette said, biting back another giggle. "It doesn't have to be like that!" Extricating herself from her girlfriends' dual embraces, she took one of their hands in each of her own. "Ladybug has two hands!"  
The three young women laughed together as they continued their wintry stroll.

2\. Decorating the House

Balancing several boxes in her hands, Marinette carefully made her way into the living room. "Okay," she called, voice only slightly strained. "These are the last of the Christmas decorations!" She moved to set the stack of boxes down, and the topmost box tumbled off.  
Dashing in from the opposite side of the Christmas tree, Alya just managed to catch the box before it crashed to the floor. "Careful, Marinette!" she playfully scolded, setting the box down. "I'd have thought your clumsiness would wear off by the time we entered lycée, but every day you seem to prove me wrong." She stood to press a quick kiss to Marinette's cheek, then bent to open the box.  
Marinette pouted at her. "You can't even blame that one on me! I didn't trip or anything, it just fell off the top of a very tall pile!" She opened the (new) topmost box and began rummaging through it.  
Sitting on the sofa with her feet up, Chloe laughed. "I'm sure it was something you did, Marinette," she said with a wink. "Boxes usually don't fall over on their own!"  
"Yeah," Marinette replied, pulling a string of lights from the box, "but sometimes they fall over due to this thing called gravity, or momentum, or a silly kwami searching for old coins."  
"Hey," Trixx called from the kitchen, "that was ONE time!"  
Alya giggled. "Okay, I'll give you that. But this time, I'm sure it was you."  
"Quit ganging up on me and help me decorate!" Marinette attempted to untangle the lights in her hands.  
"Okay, okay." Alya picked up a small statuette. "Where should we put Père Noël this year?"  
"On the shelf behind the sofa, so I don't have to look at him," replied Chloe, examining her nails.  
"Quit complaining about Père Noël and help us decorate!" Marinette had almost finished untangling the string of lights.  
"I can't help it if whatever artist designed that thing didn't know what a human being looked like!" Chloe complained, reluctantly standing up from the sofa and pointedly looking away from the statuette, still clasped in Alya's hand.  
"Is Père Noël even a human being, technically?" Alya peered closely at the statuette.  
"What else would he be?" Marinette handed Chloe one end of the light strand.  
"A physical avatar of the spirit of Christmas?" Alya suggested, placing the statuette on a shelf directly across the room from the sofa.  
"I don't care what he his," Chloe replied, reaching up to begin hanging the lights, "I refuse to look at him. Alya, if you leave him there, I'll toss him out the window."  
Alya moved Père Noël with a huff as Marinette giggled.

3\. Baking

"Marinette! What temperature am I supposed to set the oven to?" Alya fiddled with the knobs on the front of the oven.  
"I don't know, what are you making?" Marinette, who had been on her way to her sewing room, stuck her head into the kitchen.  
"Speculaas. They're for when we go visit your folks."  
"350 degrees, then. I didn't know you were making speculaas." Marinette came all the way into the kitchen, watching as Alya set the oven to preheat.  
"Yeah, I thought it would be fun to make them. Show your parents that their daughter's only dating one girl who's useless in the kitchen, not two."  
"Hey!" Chloe stepped into the kitchen as well, arms folded over her chest and her lips set into a pout. "I am not useless!"  
"Chloe, I've seen you burn water."  
"I did not! The water evaporated, and the pan was what was burning!"  
"That doesn't make it any better."  
Marinette was examining Alya's speculaa dough with a frown. "Alya, why is the dough so...lumpy?" She poked at it with a spoon.  
"I don't know. I thought it was supposed to be like that."   
Quickly washing her hands, Marinette picked up a bit of the chilled dough and pulled it apart. "Alya...." she said apologetically.  
Alya groaned. "What? Just tell me what I did wrong this time."  
"You didn't mix the dough thoroughly. There are little pockets of flour in it."  
"It's fine though, right? I mean, it's not that big a deal.  
Chloe snickered.  
"They'll cook unevenly," Marinette explained. "They'll taste weird."  
Chloe moved closer, dramatically draping an arm across Alya's shoulders. "What was that about not being useless in the kitchen, Cesaire?" Chloe batted her eyelashes at her.  
"Oh, bite me, Chloe," Alya growled. A moment later, "OW!"  
Chloe smirked, then pressed a kiss to the spot on Alya's neck where she'd nipped at her.  
Marinette rolled up her sleeves. "I can fix this," she said, then stuck her hands into the dough. She began to knead the dough, locating the flour pockets and mixing the flour into the rest of the dough.  
Alya and Chloe watched her with interest. Marinette sighed.  
"Can't you two help me instead of standing there gawking?"  
"Hey, I already did my third of the work," Alya replied, leaning against Chloe. I put it all together the first time!"  
"Badly," teased Chloe, twirling a bit of Alya's hair between her fingers. "And anyway," she said to Marinette, "it's fun to watch you work. You get so into it, whether you're baking, sewing, fighting akumas--"  
"You look super hot when you're doing that, by the way, so feisty--"  
"Oh, definitely feisty. With her hair whipping around her face while she drop-kicks a bad guy in the face?"  
"Amazing," Alya breathed.  
"Yeah," Chloe sighed happily.  
Marinette snorted. "You two always start complimenting me when you want me to do all the work."  
"We do not!" They said in unison.  
"Especially at Christmas," Marinette continued, examining the now thoroughly-mixed dough. "...This needs to go back into the fridge now," she announced.  
"No!" Alya leaned closer to Marinette, pulling slightly out of Chloe's embrace. "It was already in the fridge two hours! I can't wait another two hours!"  
"But it's warmed up again. It needs to chill!"  
Alya took the bowl back from Marinette, sticking her tongue out at her. "Thanks for the help, but I've got it from here."  
Marinette sighed. "If you're sure."  
Nodding eagerly, Alya set the bowl back onto the counter. "Yeah, I'm sure! You and Chloe go put on a Christmas movie or something, okay? I'll be in in a bit!"  
Chloe linked her arm with Marinette's. "You heard her, Nette. Leave Alya to fail on her own." She sent a wink to Alya over Marinette's head and tugged her out of the kitchen.   
Once they left, Alya immediately started rolling out the dough and cutting it into festive shapes. "It's no problem," she said confidently to herself. "I may not be the best at baking, but my mom's the head chef at Le Grand Paris, which makes me an expert by proxy!"

4\. Family

"Okay, so we'll visit Chloe's family this morning, head to Alya's parents' for lunch, meet up with Adrien and Nino afterward, and then we'll all end the day at my parents' bakery. Both of you got that?"   
Beside Marinette, Chloe groaned. "That's too much for one day! We should have split them up and visited on different days!"  
"This was the only day the three of us were all free, Chloe. We're lucky our families had the day open, too!" Alya was gathering little bundles of gifts to bring with them and distribute throughout the day.  
"Still," Chloe retorted, "Couldn't we have gotten together with Adrikins and Nino on a different day? They have a ton of free time, since they're both still on vacation, technically!"  
"They wanted to see my parents with us," Marinette said, handing an artfully wrapped package to Alya, who placed it into a basket. "Especially since they practically adopted him for three years in high school, you know, after that thing with his dad."  
"Besides, Chloe, when have you ever turned up the chance to see Adrien before?"  
Chloe huffed. "It's not that I don't want to see him, it's just that we have so much to do today, I don't think I'll even have time to do my hair between appointments or check my makeup!"  
Marinette and Alya giggled good-naturedly at their girlfriend's antics, and a few minutes later, they were out the door, gifts in tow.  
Their first stop, at Chloe's father's hotel, was a little awkward. Her father had recently remarried, and Chloe wasn't quite on agreeable terms with her new stepmother yet.  
Andre, ever the doting father, dd his best to keep the peace between the two, but by the end of the solitary hour they'd planned to spend there, all three girls were aching to take their leave.   
As soon as they'd finished handing out the gifts (which included a little package of Alya's flat, malformed speculaas), Alya, Marinette, and Chloe headed down the elevator to the hotel's restaurant.  
Lunch was a much more cheerful affair. Alya's mother took a short break from her duties as chef and joined the three, along with Alya's father, the twins Ella and Etta, and Alya's youngest sibling, Billie.  
The group talked and laughed, eating their fill and enjoying each other's company. One hour turned to two, and two to three, and before they knew it, the girls had to rush to meet up with Nino and Adrien.   
Alya gave her family hugs and kisses goodbye, waved to her mother (who had returned to work before the first hour was up), and then allowed herself to be pulled out of the hotel by her girlfriends.  
It was snowing as they left, and Alya and Chloe found themselves doubly grateful for the beautiful scarves Marinette had made for them at the beginning of the cold season.  
They met Adrien and Nino at a nearby park, and the five of them stepped into a cafe close by to get out of the weather.  
Despite the fact that they'd all seen each other just the week before (albeit in costume), they all had no shortage of topics to talk about.   
Adrien and Nino sat across from the three girls, Adrien's arm around Nino's shoulders and Nino's arm holding Adrien close by his waist. The two had been inseparable since they'd started dating in lycée, and now that they'd been married for seven months, they certainly weren't going to change their habits.  
After conversing over coffee and cake for a bit, the five of them headed out to grab a taxi.  
The short trip to Marinette's parents' bakery seemed to be only a continuation of their time in the cafe. If anything had changed since their school days, it was only that they'd gotten closer than ever.  
Upon arriving at the Dupain-Cheng Bakery, Marinette was immediately swooped into a big bear hug by her father. She laughed and hugged him back before accepting another, smaller hug from her mother. Tom Dupain gave the same greeting to each of the other four guests, and then Sabine Cheng ushered them all upstairs and proceeded to stuff them full of home-cooked goodies.  
Tom joined them once the bakery had closed for the night, and the seven of the talked and laughed and played games far into the night, until around midnight when Alya glanced at Chloe, fast asleep on the Dupain-Cheng's sofa, and declared it was time to head home.  
They all separated into their three groups (Nino and Adrien to their apartment a few blocks away, the three girls to their own apartment a bit farther away, and Tom and Sabine to their little room above the bakery), hugged and kissed each other goodbye, and made promises to call andchat on Christmas day later that week.  
It was nearly one AM by the time Chloe, Alya, and Marinette made it home, at which point they were all rather exhausted and barely managed to change into their pajamas before collapsing into bed.  
"Well," Alya muttered sleepily, cuddling Chloe close as they drifted off under the covers, "was it as bad as you thought it'd be?"  
"No," Chloe replied, nuzzling into Alya's side, "I suppose it was a pretty good day."

5\. Stockings

"Merry Christmas!" Alya exclaimed, bursting into the bedroom with her arms full of stockings. Three little kwamis flew in behind her, circling the room a few times and diving down to tickle their chosen wielders awake.  
Chloe and Marinette awoke with twin groans, reluctantly emerging from their blanket nest and swatting half-heartedly at Tikki, Pollen, and Trixx.  
"Marinette, wake up!" Tikki exclaimed, nuzzling against her cheek. "It's Christmas! Alya brought your stocking! There's candy inside!"  
"Shh, you're not supposed to spoil the surprise!" Pollen scolded gently, prodding Chloe awake.  
Giggling, Alya handed Marinette and Chloe the appropriate stockings (which had been lovingly hand-stitched by none other than Marinette, of course), and then flopped onto the bed between them, digging through her own stocking.  
"Alya, I love you," Marinette said, holding onto her stocking as Tikki wriggled into it, "and you know I love Christmas, but--" she cut herself off with a yawn before continuing, "--but it's 6 in the morning and I haven't woken up this early since I lived with my parents!"  
"I agree with Marinette," Chloe said, lifting her eye mask from her face. "It's far too early to be--OOH," she squealed, pulling a little box from her yellow-striped stocking. "Are these the bonbons from that new confectionery?!"  
"I don't know," Alya said, with a mischievous glint and a deadpan voice, "I guess you'll have to ask Santa."  
Chloe, in the middle of untying the ribbon holding the box closed, rolled her eyes at Alya. "I know you're the one who packs my stocking, Alya."  
Alya gasped, dramatically clasping a hand over her heart. "Me? Deprive Santa of his favorite holiday task? I would never!"  
"Marinette!" Tiki called, zipping out of the stocking. "Eat this cookie to gain your morning energy!" The little kwami shoved a thin chocolate cookie into Marinette's mouth before flying over to Pollen with a cookie of her own.  
Marinette absentmindedly chewed on the cookie. "Mmph," she mumbled, "This is pretty good."  
"Isn't it?!" gushed Chloe, popping a bonbon into her own mouth. "They were made by that world-famous pastry chef Daddy invited for the event a few weeks ago."  
Alya leaned over and snatched a bite of the cookie for herself. "Hmm. Yeah, pretty good, but nowhere near as good as the stuff the Dupain-Chengs make!" She winked.  
Chloe hummed thoughtfully. "Well, I suppose that IS true," she said, leaning her head on Alya's shoulder. "Everything the Dupain-Chengs make is wonderful, and I regret spending so much of my childhood being cruel to their most wonderful creation of all."  
Alya snorted, raising an eyebrow. "Oh? And which creation is that?"  
"Marinette, of course!" Chloe laughed, moving to dig through her stocking again.  
On the other side of Alya, Marinette joined in her laughter. "That was a long time ago, Chloe." She ate another cookie. "Thes are actually really good, by the way. Mama and Papa might make amazing things, but there's no reason not to enjoy other people's creations every once in awhile."  
Between them, Alya sighed contentedly. "You know I love you guys, right?"  
Chloe and Marinette giggled, both leaning in to give Alya a peck on the cheek. "We know," they replied.  
"I love both of you, too." Chloe passed a bit of candy to Pollen.  
"Absolutely," Marinette agreed. "Merry Christmas, you two."

 

**Author's Note:**

> I was actually really nervous about posting this fic, because I'd been dealing with horrible writer's block for weeks and wasn't sure if this was any good at all, but brookscribbles really liked it, and I DID have fun writing it, even if it was difficult for me.
> 
> Here's the original post on Tumblr: http://owly-bee.tumblr.com/post/168611815527/traditions
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed it, and I'd really appreciate any comments you have! Thank you! :)


End file.
